The Rogue of Luna
by Charlotte Ann Kent
Summary: Virmire is scarcely left behind and Rosamund Shepard is still trying to comprehend the malevolent entity they met there, that they barely escaped from. Speed against the Reapers, the fearsome mindless machines, is on her mind and when she stops at the Citadel to drop off her STG allies, she doesn't expect to be called off course. Nor does she dream what she'll find when she comes.


This is part of the Writers Anonymous Alternate Format Challenge.

{I will be adding more short poems to this story file later in the spring to make a selected collection of Mass Effect poetry.}

 _For those unfamiliar with Mass Effect, a brief glossary of names used in this:_

 _Commander Rosamund Shepard – the narrating character, a human space marine. She was recently named a special-agent of an interspecies council [the very first human so named] and given the task of tracking down Saren, a dangerous criminal who in league with 'the Reapers'_

 _Liara – an alien squad-member, she's team lore-mistress._

 _Kaidan – a crew-member, lieutenant in the marines, he's recently been injured in battle._

 _Garrus – an alien squad member, he's the same race as the criminal they're hunting._

 _Tali – an alien squad-member, she's particularly skilled at fighting synthetics._

 _The Alliance is the human space military_

 _The Citadel is a space station._

 _The Reapers are a race of enormous, ancient machines which Shepard believes are seeking to wipe out galactic civilization._

* * *

Many days from Hoc's hard gaze

Many days from Virmire

We burst again on the purple rays

And the gleaming Citadel spires.

All is just as it was before.

No fright, or bustle, no signs of war.

As if the hideous threat we've so plainly seen

Far across space, was only a dream.

We leave the docks as soon as may be

Gliding out o'er the Citadel towers

Away from the Council's stubborn seat

And the halls, and the courts, and the bowers.

Our intent is for the far icy shore

Of distant Noveria, and yet before

We can sail to the relay, Alliance Command

Hails down our vessel, and conference demands.

Hackett, Admiral of the fleet

Has an order for me

And calls a diversion of my ship

He calls back the Normandy

Back to the Sol system, back to Earth

To its orbit, to our own moon

Where a training system needs shut down

He bids – he requests – I come soon.

The training VI on Luna Base

Where young marines train for battle in space

Has gone rogue, killed cadets, overridden control

And now as if mad, the whole training ground holds.

'We need someone to shut it down.

I know that you're a Spectre now.

But you're still everything that you have been

You're still a human, an Alliance marine.

We're calling you in, Shepard. Come soon as you can.'

For a moment I stop.

But I understand.

'But Rosamund, a training-ground?

That doesn't really very much sound

Urgent enough to justify

Even the length of time to fly.

The Reapers have knowledge which we do not

Every moment that passes develops their plot.'

Liara looks up with her great blue eyes.

'Surely the base has marines close by?'

Kaidan nods.

'Of course we do.

That can't be the reason. Commander?'

'True.

We have whole fleets which orbit round.

This isn't about the training-ground.'

'Then why ...?' asks Liara.

'To set precedent.

Does a Spectre come when an Admiral's sent?

They chose their time well. It's mere hours to Sol.

What it takes from our journey's a very slight toll.

We have another mindless machine

Out there killing men, a malfunction I deem.

The Reapers can wait a few hours more.

It's the smallest blip in the course of this war.'

'Shall we get ready?'

I smile at her.

'I'll need you right here. You're doing good work.

And not you, Lieutenant. Your wounds are scarce sealed.

There'll be battle enough when you're fully healed.

I'll slip in with one squad. That's best for this job.

They're worried that Saren's smearing the Turians?

This is visible. I'm taking Garrus.

And the technical skill of those Quarians!

Tali will also come with us.'

The sky is black; as black as ink.

And the ground is as bright as salt.

It stretches away; it swells and sinks

Splashed with shadows and faults.

A soundless, airless, brilliant waste

Open above to the cold of space

Where the dust rises up from the Mako's treads

And drops straight down in its age old beds

Where never a wind blew drifting streams

And never a rain came to wash it clean.

The barren companion of the fertile Earth

Lies in its unchanging silence.

Cold Diane looks upon warm Maia's mirth

With a placid, icy defiance.

While in brightness she silently lies

Our little truck creeps below her dark skies,

Through lowlands and valleys and under the lips

Of rises of stone, where dust falls and slips.

Past the scout towers and past the pitfalls

Out of the line where the spy-glasses fall

Up to the circle of turrets which rise

Above the hard ground where the rogue VI lies.

'Take the wheel Garrus – avoid and evade.'

He takes her and spins! In and out of the cannonade

Til I have disabled with cannon the guns,

Laid open the bunker – our foe cannot run.

Down the stair to the bunker's depths

Out of the light of the Earth

Down to a mind which knows no rest

And stares out on moon fields as a curse.

The underground tunnels are dim and cold

The lights are red and the smell is old.

A strange prickling grows at the back of my neck.

As of unseen eyes in the dark

Whyever so empty? Where are all its mechs?

We go deeper yet none do we mark.

Yet I know they are there

In the tunnels, stark and bare

Waiting out of sight and sound

Far beneath the lunar ground

Held back deeper, why so deep

Why so far it makes us creep

To find the battle we know must come.

In the whirring chill, my squad grows dumb

And stares big eyed in every nook

Looks twice at the ground for every foot.

While in silence we follow our charts

Deeper and deeper into the heart

Of the rogue computer's many years home.

Shadowy dim is the redding gloam.

They attack altogether, all down in the core

A hundred mockery things of war

Fighting more fiercely than wasp or ant

With their mockery guns they fight but they can't

O'er power shields or stand up to our fire

They fall, fall in droves, by the troop they expire.

But even after the last one falls

Those eyes seem to follow our backs

We turn and we turn and we scan through the walls

For those eyes which never attack.

Deeply buried's the VI's core

Walled in close by the dummies of war

And long we work in the low red murk

To uncover, to open a door.

And now and oft, Tali grabs at her gun

And turns upon … nothing. It's bare.

And Garrus will hurl down the sheeting and run

Towards an enemy … who is not there.

We post Tali guard and go on as before,

Shavings of metal scatter the floor,

Power tools scream, and not sounds of war,

And yet none of us still can ignore,

The eyes we can't see.

We uncover the core.

There it lies. A box. No more large than a chest.

Small and unfeatured, seeming at rest.

A little thing, to have caused so much trouble,

A silent thing, in the midst of the rubble.

The centre of all the mindless rage

The rabid thing which stole the age

From men too young to die

The waiting thing which held the base

The watching thing that haunts this place

The silent, waiting spy.

The thing which sat for decades long

Playing and playing the martial song

That we taught it long years before

What made it break the rhythm, the beat

Break out of the song it was taught by the fleet

What made this machine go to war?

I reach for the power

A shriek fills the space

A shriek of the airways that run through this place

A shriek of the light-bulbs. A shriek of the lines

Which carry the power. Sparks flash and floors whine.

'Shepard! I've got something!'

I hear Tali say.

'Shut it down! Shut it down! It's not going to obey!'

I yank out the cords and shut the thing down

Like a light going off the cacophonous sound

Falls dead on the air

The empty lights glare.

The box sits black on the ground

'Tali, what have you?'

She tilts her masked head.

'Nothing, Shepard, just – something it said.

It sent out a signal, as you came near.

If I didn't know better … Well, come and look here.'

She holds out her omnitool. I see in the glow

The dashes and dots of the words of our foe.

It is in _Morse_ , a code I know well.

It repeats o'er and o'er, just one word

' _Help'_

We leave the VI shut down in the hold

And climb back up through the bunker so cold.

Who was it calling? Who taught it to cry?

Where did it learn to seek aid from the sky?

It was not built for that. It was built just to be

A training ground tool to engage young marines.

It was never programmed to fight to the death

Nor call for aid – never taught to fear death.

And yet … I walk in untrodden wastes

What I thought was firm ground drops away out of place.

If a training VI can learn how to fear,

What of the Reapers? They surely appear

As though they were egos, as black the void

Irrational, cruel, and completely devoid

Of ought but a hunger, to impose their own will

To control, to torment, to cow, and to kill.

And how if what it seems is in fact as it is?

How if the _machines_ in some fiendish sense – live.

Whoever built them, for what ancient war

What if their resolve to subdue to them more

Was not automatic, but their ego's desire

What if not mere numbers, but the hell of black fire

Burned at the heart of these monsters from space?

As fear cried out of the heart of this place.

The light of the Earth breaks out o'er the land

As we step out of the mound.

It softens and mutes the black of the shadows

The hard sun strikes on the ground.

I look up, to the world of living green

Up to the world of men

The arc of umber and ultramarine

So filled beyond my ken

With life that laughs in its leaping streams

And prowls beneath oaks in its narrow denes

And soars in the garlands of sea born steam,

There life – good and ill – uncountable teems

And children laugh and young lovers dream.

It seems so near I could reach out

And touch its cloak of mist

A leap would bring my hand into

The shallows the sunlight's kissed

And it is as far as an image of glory

Seen by a child in a sky o'er the sea.

I could go up, and my crew with me

I could, but it must not be.

For this is that which is at stake

It's this that is threatened by that thing that waits

Out in the deep and dark of space

Scheming and plotting to bring its own race

Here to this womb of life.

That thing I had called a mindless machine

That thing which, in theory, ought to have been.

I look up again to the light.

And then turn away. For we must be gone.

I don't know what we fight, or where it went wrong.

But I know that they're coming. That matters far more

That wonderments why. For we are at war.

'Shepard to Normandy, pick us up. Let's away.

The task here is done, and there's no time to stay.'


End file.
